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AUSTRALIA'S close military alliance with the United States is to
be further entrenched with the building of a high-tech
communications base in Western Australia.

The Federal Government is about to approve the base after three
years of secret negotiations with Washington.

The Age has been told the base, which will be built on
defence land at Geraldton, will provide a crucial link for a new
network of military satellites that will help the US's ability to
fight wars in the Middle East and Asia. It will be the first big US
military installation to be built in Australia in decades, and
follows controversies over other big bases such as Pine Gap and
North West Cape.

The deal has come to light amid heightened political debate over
the alliance with the US and in the same week that the US finally
told Australia it would not allow it to buy its best fighter
aircraft, the F-22 Raptor.

The base, about 370 kilometres north of Perth, will control two
of five geostationary satellites - those with the highest priority
parked over the Indian Ocean to monitor the unstable Middle East.
Building may start within months.

A visiting fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy,
Philip Dorling, said that once the base was operating it would be
almost impossible for Australia to be fully neutral or stand back
from any war in which the US was involved.

The network will provide frontline military units instantly with
high quality intelligence information, graphics and maps. All this
information will be carried in unbreakable codes.

The Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, confirmed that talks were
continuing with the US Defence Department which wanted to build a
ground station for its Mobile User Objective System. More ground
stations might be built at other locations in Australia, he
said.

Dr Dorling said the base would have direct military significance
and would be a military target, similar to the submarine
communications base at North West Cape and the joint facility at
Pine Gap with its missile early warning system.